Persuasion In Business: Repetition, Images, Phrases And Repetition

Persuasion isn’t just for marketing. Every business leader persuades staff members to work in alignment with corporate values and strategy. Every business leader persuades suppliers and support companies to provide great service at good prices. Most top executives spend more time trying to persuade others than they do plotting strategy. So let’s get better at persuasion.

Scott Adams' Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

courtesy of Portfioio/Penguin Random House

Whether you like President Trump or not, Win Bigly provides theory and examples of strong persuasion techniques, in a humorous format. Here are my big takeaways that business leaders can use in their daily communications.

Repetition is vital. For example, let’s say that you’ve told your employees that customer focus is vital to the company’s continued success. Adams would have you repeat it in every conversation with employees, every speech, and every written statement. Bright people often think that if they’ve said it once, the point has been made. No, the point needs to be repeated.

Early in my corporate career one of my colleagues was intent on working exactly as he had worked at a previous job. I would have fired him if I had been the boss. But our manager had an approach based on repetition. He mentioned in a hallway conversation with the problem employee that our department needs to be highly tuned in to the needs of our internal customers. And then two days later I overheard the manager making the exact same statement in a casual chat with the same employee. And again the next day, in an entirely different context, he restated his theme in virtually identical words. And it worked. It took a couple of months, but the employee whom I would have fired re-oriented his work to serve our internal customers. Repetition made the point important and memorable.

Imagery is valuable as a persuasion technique, as Donald Trump demonstrated when he said, “We’re going to build a wall.” Trump had no visual aid, but everyone imagined a wall. Big and beautiful, Trump suggested, and everyone got the “big” if not the “beautiful.” Adams points out that a more nuanced version would have described it as a secure border system, consisting of a wall in some place, fencing at other locations, with electronic surveillance in other geographies. A wonkish politician loves to display a grasp of details and nuance. Trump, instead, provided a vision of what he wanted.

When critics argued that a wall was not appropriate for the entire length of our border with Mexico, Trump conceded the point but kept referring to a wall. That discussion provided repetition. Yes, repetition pops up even when the subject is imagery. And when Trump’s opponents raised questions about the cost, Trump replied that he would get Mexico to pay for it. More arguments. Adams says that once you are arguing about how to pay for it, you’ve won the battle of the wall’s desirability.

After repetition and imagery, Adams third major theme is strong phrasing. “Make America great again” is a strong phrase. It has hard sounds, and the words are strong: make, America, and great. His opponent’s first campaign slogan was “I’m with her.” Softer sounds, no strength in the specific words, and a focus on “her” rather than the country. The Clinton campaign tried other slogans, finally settling on “Stronger together,” which was much stronger, but not nearly as good as Make America Great Again. (And in case you’re wondering, I didn’t vote for Donald Trump.)

Repetition, imagery and strong phrasing are the primary takeaways. (Did you notice how I repeated “repetition” once again?)

Do a favor for the other person before trying to persuade. Reciprocity is a common response.

Don’t worry about being obvious with persuasion techniques; they still work when recognized.

Things a person thinks about the most rise in importance in the person’s mind. (One of the reasons for repetition.)

People are more influenced by the direction of a change than by the level of what’s being examined. For example, economists have found that voting is more influenced by the change in the unemployment rate before the election rather than the average level of unemployment during the incumbent’s term of office.

If you attack a core belief, the person will dig in heels.

Visuals make a bigger impact on a person than words, even if the visual is just in the person’s mind.

Simple is more persuasive than complicated. This is a challenge for many top business executives, who are both smart and highly informed. They know so much on the subject they are talking about that it’s hard work to keep the message simple. But simple persuades better than complicated.

Win Bigly flies in the face of my own career. I understand the biggest economic factor affecting a company, but I also understand 13 other factors. And having learned all these factors, I want to share my knowledge. When speaking to corporate boards, I’m often tempted to throw some differential equations up on the whiteboard, a temptation I have successfully resisted--so far.

The world is complicated, and business strategy must reflect the complexity of modern consumer attitudes, employee concerns and global supply chains. The successful executive shifts away from complexity toward a simpler mode when being persuasive, utilizing repetition, imagery and strong phrases.